Chapter Twenty.
Peace.
“If you please, my lady, Thomas Bradly would be glad to speak with you for a few minutes, if you could oblige him.”
“Thomas Bradly?” asked Lady Morville of the footman who brought the message; “is he one of our own people?”
“No, my lady; but he says you’ll know who he is if I mention that Jane Bradly is his sister.”
“Dear me! Yes, to be sure. Take him into the housekeeper’s room, and tell him I will be with him in a few minutes.”
“Well, Thomas,” said her ladyship, holding out her hand to him as she entered the room, “I’m very glad to see you. I needn’t ask if you are well.”
“Thank your ladyship, I’m very well; and I hope you’re the same, and Sir Lionel too.”
“Thank you. Sir Lionel is not so well just now; he has had a good deal to worry him lately. But how are all your family? We miss you still from church very much, and from the Lord’s table.—And poor Jane?”
“Well, my lady, poor Jane’s been poor Jane indeed for a long time, but she’s rich Jane now.”
“You don’t mean to say, Thomas—!” exclaimed the other in a distressed tone.
“Oh no!” interrupted Bradly; “Jane’s not left yet for the better land, though she’s walking steadily along the road to it. But the Lord has been very gracious to her, in bringing her light in her darkness. She wants for nothing now, except a kind message from your ladyship, which I hope to carry back with me.”
“That you shall, with all my heart, Thomas, though I don’t quite see what your meaning is. But I can tell you this: I have never felt satisfied about poor Jane’s leaving me as she did, and yet I do not see that I could have acted otherwise than I did at the time; but I have wished her back again a thousand times, you may tell her, especially as I fear there were some base means used to get her away.”
“How does your ladyship mean?”
“Why, have you not heard, Thomas, that John Hollands the butler has absconded? He left us on a pretence of visiting some of his relations, with his master’s leave, last December; and we find now that he has been robbing us for years, and cheating the trades-people, and even selling some of Sir Lionel’s choice curiosities, and putting the money into his own pocket. It is this that has worried Sir Lionel till he is quite ill. We have had, too, to make an entire change of all our servants; for we found that all of them had been, more or less, sharing in Hollands’ wickedness and deceit.”
“And was your ladyship’s own maid, Georgina, one of these?”
“O Thomas! She was worse, if possible, even than Hollands. Before he left I detected her in lying, thieving, and intemperance, besides abominable hypocrisy, and was thankful to get her out of the house.”
“Well, my lady, I’m truly sorry for all this; but perhaps it shows that poor Jane’s story may have been true after all.”
“Indeed it does; but still I have never been able to understand Jane’s conduct when I found the bracelet in her hands. If she had only produced the other bracelet, and explained in a simple way how she came by them, or if the other bracelet had been found, that might have made a difference; but it has never been seen or heard of from that day to this.”
“I can now explain all to your ladyship’s full satisfaction,” said Bradly.
“Indeed, Thomas, I shall be only too thankful, for I now know both Georgina and John Hollands to have been utterly untruthful, and I could almost as soon have doubted my own senses as Jane’s truthfulness and honesty. But appearances did certainly seem very much against her.”
“Your ladyship says nothing but the simple truth, but I can explain it all now from John Hollands’ own confession.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, my lady. On the 23rd of last December, Hollands, who was on his way abroad, stopped at our station—Crossbourne station—on the road, and left a bag and a letter for Jane in the hands of a railway porter. In that bag was the missing bracelet, the fellow to the one your ladyship saw in Jane’s hands; and a letter was in the bag too, explaining how John had joined Georgina in a plot to ruin Jane, because she had reproved them for some of their evil doings.”
“Dear me!” cried her ladyship, shocked and surprised; “is it possible? But why did you not acquaint me with this at once?”
“Well, my lady, here is the strangest part of my story. The porter, instead of bringing the bag on to us at once, left it outside a public-house, while he went in to get a drink, and when he came out again the bag was gone; and, though every inquiry and search was made after it, it only turned up a few days ago.”
“But the letter?” asked Lady Morville; “did the porter lose that too?”
“No; he brought it to us in a day or two, for he were afraid to bring it at first, because he’d lost our bag.”
“Still, Thomas, if you or Jane had brought that letter, it would, no doubt, have made all plain, and quite cleared her character.”
“Ah! But, my lady, the letter the porter brought said very little. I have it here. It only says, ‘Dear Jane, I am sorry now for all as I’ve done at you. Pray forgive me. You will find a letter all about it in the bag, and I’ve put your little marked Bible and the other br—t (that means bracelet, of course) with it into the bag. So no more at present from yours—JH.’”
“And why didn’t you bring me this letter, Thomas? I should have been quite satisfied with it.”
“Ah! My lady, it would have looked a lame sort of tale if I’d brought this letter and said as the bag and bracelet had been lost. It would have looked very much like a roundabout make-up sort of story, letter and all.”
“I see what you mean, Thomas; but now you say that the bag and its contents have been found after all. Pray, tell me all about it.”
“Well, it’s a long story, my lady; but, if you’ll have patience with me, I’ll make it as short as I can.”
Bradly then proceeded to give Lady Morville the history of the manner in which the way had been opened up little by little, and the bag found at last. He then drew from his pocket a neatly-folded packet, and handed it to her ladyship, who, having opened it, found the bracelet.
“Yes,” she said, “there can be no doubt about it—this is my missing bracelet; and that heartless creature Georgina has cruelly misled me, and, more cruelly still, ruined for a time the character of her fellow—servant. But, poor, wretched, misguided creature, her triumphing was short indeed.”
Before she could say more, Bradly placed in her hands Hollands’ letter of explanation. She read it through slowly and carefully; and then, laying it down, leaned her head on her hand, while her tears fell fast.
“O Thomas,” she said, after a while, “what a terrible trial your sister’s must have been! How can I ever make her amends for the cruel injustice I have been guilty of to her?”
“Nay, my lady,” cried Thomas, touched by her deep emotion, “you’ve done Jane no wrong; you did as you was bound to do under the circumstances. It’s all right now, and the Lord’s been bringing a wonderful deal of blessing out of this trouble. Jane’s been sharply chastened, but she’s stood the trial well, by God’s grace, and she’s come out of it purified like the fine gold. All she wants now is a kind message by me, assuring her as you are now thoroughly satisfied she was innocent of what was laid to her charge and led to her leaving your service.”
“She shall have it, Thomas, and not only by word of mouth, but in my own handwriting.”
So saying, Lady Morville rang the bell, and having ordered some refreshment for Thomas Bradly, asked him to wait while she went to her own room and wrote Jane a letter. In half an hour she returned, and, having given the letter into Bradly’s charge, said,—
“I have been talking to Sir Lionel, and he is as pleased as I am at the thorough establishment of Jane’s character; and we both wish to show our sense of her value, and our conviction that she deserves our fullest confidence, and some amends too for my mistaken judgment, by offering her the post of matron to a cottage hospital we have been building, if she feels equal to undertaking it. She will have furnished rooms, board, and firing, and thirty pounds a year, and the duties will not require much physical exertion. I shall thus have her near me, and it will be my constant endeavour to show my sense of her worth, and my sorrow for her sufferings, by doing everything in my power to make her comfortable and happy.”
“I’m sure Sir Lionel, and your ladyship more particularly, deserve our most grateful thanks for your goodness,” said Thomas Bradly. “I don’t doubt as Jane’ll be better content to be earning her own living again, though she’s not been eating the bread of idleness, and I’m sure she couldn’t start again in a happier way to herself, so I’ll tell her your most kind offer; and may the Lord reward Sir Lionel and yourself for it.”
No man in the United Kingdom journeyed homeward that day in a happier frame of mind than Thomas Bradly.